W HEN I was a child, we used to spend the winters in town and the summers at the sea- shore, so it wasn't until I was ten years old that I saw a farm. We were at the shore, and my aunt and three of her hotel-rocker friends made up a party to drive some distance inland to a New England farm they had heard about where some beautiful old patch- work quilts were for sale. They took me along for a treat, because I had never seen real country or been on a real farm before. It was a bright, hot August after- noon, I remember, and the ride was very exciting for me. It was the longest one I'd ever had in an automobile. There was nothing about the farm, though, that surprised or impressed me very much except a peach tree that was in the side yard. It was a small, low tree, weighted down with the big- gest and most beautiful peaches in the world. I had never seen such peaches before and I've never seen any such since. My aunt and the other ladies exclaimed over them, and the farmer's wife took us to look at them more closely. She apologized for not offering any to us, but eXplained that it was a very special tree. She and her hus- band tended it like a child every year, she said, and when the peaches were just exactly ripe, they picked them and packed them very, very care- fully and took them to the county fair, where they al- ways won first prize. After- wards they were sold sepa- rately for fancy prices, she said. She stroked the lovely, sun- ny, fuzzy side of one of the peaches with her finger and said they were nearly ready to be picked. You could tel] how proud she was of them. I was very anxious to have one of the peaches, they looked so good, and, when the ladies were busy inside the house looking at the patchwork quilts, I came back out in the yard and selected the very finest one I could see, and picked it. I was quite scared just after I pick- ed it, for fear someone might have seen me. I ate it in THE NEW YORKER 19 finished," she said, "just throw the rind to the chickens." I ate the watermelon, though I wasn't so very hungry after the peach. Then I walked over to the chicken yard, carrying the rind. The chickens saw me coming and fell all over one another, running toward me. I stood watching them a minute, and then I threw the rind over the fence. The rind hit one of the chickens, a black-and- white one that wasn't very big, and the chicken fell over. The other chick- T HE ladies had quilts spread out all ens scrambled for the rind and pecked over the furniture in the sitting- it into small pieces so quickly that it room and were looking at them, mak- took my breath away. Then I noticed ing up their minds. They weren't that the chicken I had hit, the one having anything to eat, but the farmer's that had fallen over, hadn't got up wife had thought I looked lonely, and again. Its eyes had closed, and the so had asked if I would like some water- lids over them were greenish. It was melon. She took me out into the dead. kitchen and cut me a big piece. She I held onto the wire fence and stared was a pleasant woman, with her hair at it. I couldn't understand how any- combed up tight into a topknot. She thing could die so easily, or so fast. I told me to eat the watermelon in the was simply dumbfounded. The chicken back yard, where I could spit out the -- had been alive and running around seeds on the ground. "When you're only a second before. Then it came over me that I had killed it, that it was dead because I had killed it. I was scared silly when I realized that. I looked all around to see if any- one had seen me throw the rind over the fence, but there was no one anywhere. The rind itself was fast disappear- ing; in another moment, it would be entirely gone. "Per- haps," I thought, "the chicken was going to die anyway. Perhaps it was a delicate chick- en." But I knew better. I had killed it, all right. It looked so sad lying there on its side, with its eyelids pale green, that it haunted me, sort of. I was afraid that the ladies would ask the farmer's wife to show them over the place and that they would discover the chicken, but they had pick- ed out their quilts and were ready to leave when I got back to the house, so I felt quite relieved. The ladies were very pleased with their quilts; they said they hadn't really ex- pected to find such beautiful ones. All the way home in the automobile I slept in my aunt's lap. I was tired be- cause so much had happened to me that afternoon. -FRANCES WARFIELD PASTORAL such big bites I nearly choked. But it was pink inside. and juicy and warm from the sun and tasted just as good as I thought it would, and no one had seen me, so it was all right. I went and sat on the front steps of the house after that. Finally my aun t called to me from inside to ask if I would like a piece of water- melon. l ',!l r :M " '$ ..: .;O.'.' "\___: :i:!F\r , '/ ,',.,'""",..').,-....,,.','-..-... Ø!f'"""",' ..,-,}J# ;""': ..... .(0" , <- . .f.:: . ' :,"' ':""" . ".<,/':",",' .;";:":::'.. :: , i ':;) , ';.:" .::: ..... ::.. , - ,w " ':.'::::{' r'.:: : ::' , {f \ \ é ". .... ...: " . ,4 , x ? ili. ">t'\ø , \ ','j 'Y..' . ",:I- 'l' OUR. NATIVE. BIRDS THE HONEYBUNCH OR CAROLINA YOU-ALL Most everybody has seen this little South- ern beauty, hopping about the front yard in the morning, or singing mighty pretty when the moon shines. Her mating call is the sad, sweet "Honey" from which she gets her name. RANGE: Below the Mason-Dixon line.